So after making my first post about Veggie Straws, a good friend of mine gave me a nice big bag of them. (Just some background so you don't think I'm out buying the stuff.)

The bag that we bought went stale because, surprise, surprise, my kids wouldn't eat them. So I took the stale bag of veggie straws and dumped them into my chicken coop.

For anyone who doesn't know about chickens, they will pretty much eat anything. If I put rotten banana peals into a pile of their own poop they'll eat it. (Gross I know)

Well as you may have guessed, in the morning the veggie straws were still on the ground in the coop.

While you may think that is the end, there is more. I still had a large unopened bag of veggie straws, given to me by my friend, and I knew I couldn't feed them to my kids, or to my chickens. So I took them to the youth group where I volunteer and fed them to the young men. 

They disappeared.

Moral of the story: Don't kiss boys in High School, you don't know what they've put in their mouths. (Yuck!)

What can I say? I love the stuff!

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head and think, "I love this song! I'm glad that I get to listen to it over and over again?"

If you're like me that never happens. I end up with partial songs, annoying songs, and sometimes songs that I don't even know the words. That's the worst! I can't even tell people the song that won't leave me alone because all I can do is hum a bar or two, then say a word or two while I'm getting that you're-out-of-your-mind look that I get more often than I'd like to admit.

So anyway today was that kind of day. I had a song from the Disney's The Little Mermaid in my head. It was the song that the evil Sea Witch sings in the boat while throwing her hair pin at the mirror. It kinda goes like de-de-de- out to sea I'll look divine... do-do-do-working out something... soon I'll have that little Mermaid and the OCEAN WILL BE MINE!!!

Well now you're probably giving your computer screen one of those why-did-I-finish-reading-this-post look, unless of course, you're not actually reading this... :)

When I was first getting to know my wife we were talking about some of our favorite things. While it did not lead into a musical number about kittens and puppies all tied up in strings, it did make an interesting turn.

For some reason, beyond any level of common sense, I blurted out that one of my favorite smells was a freshly spread field. Despite my inexplicable declaration of liking the smell of manure, she did not go running in the opposite direction.

Here we are almost eleven years later. We built a house in the middle of a large field and the local farmers hay all around us. This past winter and spring they have been fertilizing in front and now beside the house, filling the air with the overwhelming and ever-present smell of cow poop.

In memory of a time when I said I liked that smell, I wrote a verse that can be added to the song 'Favorite Things'.

Gray shirts and kisses and long-distance phone calls
Talking 'till midnight and ring shopping in malls
Noisy old tractors with spreaders that fling
These are a few of my favorite things

When the egg rots
When the milk sours
When an accident 's had
I open my window to my 'favorite' smell
and then they don't seem so bad.

It is safe to say that today a spread field is not one of my favorite things.

Some advice: If you are ever in the situation where you are asked to list your favorite smells here are some great smells that should come to mind well before a freshly spread field: fresh baked bread, Spring, perfume, flowers, and pretty much anything else.

Getting all kinds of chocolate at Easter time has got me thinking of one of my biggest pet peeves about Halloween: 'fun size' chocolate bars.

You've probably seen these chocolate bars that are so small that they can hardly be classified as anything more than an M&M but they call them fun sized. How much fun is it to eat a tiny little shred of chocolate? I don't see kids running around all excited and happy about these little things.

If it was really a fun size it would be bigger. I'm not talking about bigger than their current puny size, I'm talking bigger than a normal king sized chocolate bar. That would be fun.

Just think of the faces of the children, how happy they would be, if the fun sized bars really were more fun. That's all I'm asking the candy producers of the world to do... think of the happiness they could bring to the children.

It is important to check sources, verify facts and make sure you're not just believing everything that you see online. So in an effort to help alleviate confusion on the issue I propose a solution that will start with me. Every website should have this statement posted:

I hereby declare to all those who read, never take anything I write on this blog seriously, ignore it completely, and that includes this post...